House taking up border bill next week

House Republican leadership plans to bring a border-security bill to the floor next week — the first move on immigration reform this year since last week’s House vote to roll back President Barack Obama’s immigration actions.

The GOP leadership announced the plans at a closed-door party meeting Wednesday morning, sources said. The legislation comes from House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas), who unveiled the 72-page bill last week.

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After hours of delay and a late-night markup, the legislation passed McCaul’s committee on a party-line, 18-12 vote. McCaul has touted the legislation as the “toughest border security bill ever,” yet he was starting to get pushback from hard-liners who say it doesn’t go far enough.

Among other provisions, McCaul’s legislation would require the Department of Homeland Security to achieve “operational control” — preventing all illegal entries to the U.S. — along the entire Southern border within five years, and in high-traffic areas within two years. If DHS missed those timelines, political appointees at the department could face penalties such as a ban from using government aircraft and restrictions on bonuses and pay raises.

The bill would also deploy new technology along the border, call for new fencing, require DHS to implement a biometric exit system at all ports of entry within five years, and give border patrol agents access to federal lands.

But some conservatives say McCaul’s legislation doesn’t take other steps that would help reduce illegal immigration. For example, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) complained that the bill doesn’t include measures to toughen enforcement away from the border — though McCaul noted that that would typically be an issue for the Judiciary Committee, not his panel.

“I don’t think he understands that that’s a Judiciary Committee jurisdiction, not mine,” McCaul said of Sessions. “I have border security, Judiciary has interior enforcement. I support his points [and] I wish I could put them in my bill, but I can’t.”

Still, some others were echoing Sessions. Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), who has led a push in the House to cut off funding for implementing Obama’s executive actions, said some of the senator’s criticisms “are concerns that many in the conference have.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who is known as an immigration hard-liner, said he was concerned that the narrowly written border security measure could be the gateway for a broader immigration overhaul.

“I don’t want to start walking down a path until I know where we’re headed,” he said. “And the implications are that this is the beginning of a series of things that [leadership] would like to do.”

Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) said he was still reviewing McCaul’s legislation but slammed a proposal, floating around on Capitol Hill and mentioned in a POLITICO story Wednesday morning, that would tie the border-security bill to a must-pass funding measure for the Department of Homeland Security. Some top Republicans are considering that strategy as a way to register displeasure with Obama’s immigration actions without risking a cutoff of DHS funding.

“You’re going to make the McCaul bill a divisive issue in the conference, as opposed to something that brings the conference together,” Labrador said, calling the strategy a “terrible idea.” He also pointed to the Senate, arguing that it’s “high time” Republicans there such as Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah “start fighting” to ensure that measures blocking Obama’s actions can pass.

Though previous versions of McCaul’s border-security legislation have won bipartisan support, House Democrats immediately pounced on his latest bill, saying it would be a misuse of taxpayer money to build the fencing and other infrastructure it calls for.

“After working across the aisle on border security legislation just last year, it is extremely unfortunate that Chairman McCaul has quickly abandoned it to placate the most extreme factions of the Republican Conference,” said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s top Democrat.